To Western mobile users who have grown too accustomed to Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp, WeChat may not ring any bells as a cool social-networking and instant-messaging tool. But according to Global Web Index data, WeChat …

The online reactions to the PRISM incident, in which the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has been revealed to conduct a far-ranging surveillance program affecting many both in the U.S. and abroad, have been as …

This article also appears on The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. On February 17, ex-Google China head Lee Kai-fu stated on Twitter that he had been locked out of China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo …

When the New York Times reported yesterday that Chinese hackers had been attacking its computer system for months, one social media user in China asked, “Another glorious feat of Lanxiang Vocational School?” While Lanxiang was …

This article also appears in The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Last week, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt urged North Korean leaders to embrace the Internet. Only a small proportion of that country’s …

Do censors working for Sina corporation have a moral obligation not to work there? That is the provocative question posed by @假装在纽约, a user whose handle literally means “pretending to be in New York.” On …

Social media users on Twitter and Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging platform, have complained about slow or spotty Internet access, particularly to Google and Gmail, during the countdown to China’s leadership transition. But is it …

In a high-stakes game marrying geopolitics with big business and international espionage, is turnabout fair play? According to one very opinionated corner of the Chinese Internet, the answer is a resounding yes. Yesterday, the U.S. …

With Facebook making its initial public stock offering today, some Chinese netizens are reminded of the existence of a juicy social networking platform that is, unfortunately, blocked in their home country. As Tea Leaf Nation …

Has a great thaw begun? On February 21, netizens reported that Google+ has become accessible in China without a user’s having to scale the Great Firewall. Accounts seem to differ on whether Youtube is now …